got a proto-new-year-resolution to get crack'n on - a yearly list of books read - often i find myself reading in a burgundy-induced state of blissful bafflement and realize just how little of this word gobbly-gook is going to stick to the brain matter - mighta as well get this shit set down in ones n' zeroes to at least let me remember what it was i've lost
here's what i can recollect for two-ought-one-four and a stream o'consciousness of what i recall as kewl - promise i'll make it more proper this coming year:
- taken at the flood - read largely while aroudn wolf rock working on good, good times w/ my boy ben - at night by campfire, suckign down camels and guzzling good old burgundy, waiting to gird meself for mossy battle the next day - a fascinating history of the roman conquest of greece a generation or two before the roman civil war would bring the republic to naught - favorite memory, the shakespearen epiquote: "there is a tide that runs through the affairs of men that, taken at the flood, leads on to greatness"
- dylan: the biography - library up my asshole for not finishing this one on time - read in part by campfire outside prineville whilst laying seige to stein's w/ pleasant pat - obeyed the Golden Rule of Biographies - you will thoroughly dislike this dissident bastard by book's end
- the true american: murder and mercy in texas - a summer book and done in a couple days i recall - think a road-trip to stuart was mixed in there, raged ruin for poor nastia - a story of a muslim immigrant shot in the face and nearly killed by a pissed off texan just days after 9/11, how the killer was a victim himself and the victim a man made whole by confronting and forgiving his would-be killer - texans too strapped for time to call it by the whole title, simply they titter "we done sentenced him to the death"
- cicero: the life and times of rome's greatest politician - not quite yet brought this one to a conclusion, but will by years end no doubt - a steadfast companion on long walks by the lake afterschool, sometimes by umbrella, others by 3/4 gloves - poor boy, never knowing which horse to back - cato killed by his own hands, ripping out his own stitches when the bastards dare try to sew him back together - cicero, his neck extended from his litter, 60 years after his birth and sadly stopped in desperate flight: "soldier, there is nothing right about what you're doing, but do try to at least kill me right"
- birdmen: the wright brothers, glenn curtiss and the battle to control the skies - also read in part roudn wolf rock - a swimming hole w/ benny-boy, let down by a skinny fixed line - one of the Great Fathers of Early Flight, his neck-broken, dying after a disastrous glider flight: "sacrifices will have to be made" - the wright brothers like so many other inventors, awful tee-totaling bastards best heaped on pyres and burned in batches - curtiss quite the kewler cat
- the first tycoon: the epic life of cornelius vanderbilt - wow, this one took awhile, my yosemite-guardian - we'd wrap up a ruinous day w/a short drive out of the park, thrown down on a tarp in the torrid dust, pat to cook up curiosu meats most nights n' me to smoke n' drink n' read n' generally take in life like a lord - a damned bible about a bigger bastard i did not quite grasp until taking it on - never knew he was responsible for the bottling up of the c.s.s. merimack after the battle of hampton rhodes, nor that he, as a patriot, started a school in the post-war south to mend the fences - he died in a most disgraceful way, poisoned by the filth bubbling out of his broken bowels
the guns of august and what price glory - commerorated the centeniall of the great war by re-reading some classics - barbara tuchman, if only i could bring you back and bang you proper, you sure deserved it this time around the theme tinging the ends of my reading sessions was painting basic brown on the trim n' every bit of wood i could find in me house - "what price" so insane - "they shall not pass!" poor petain
doctor sleep - maybe the only big bit of fiction i took on in 2014 - my first stephen king novel in 2 decades i think, though he was far and away my favorite author in my teen years - the sequel to "the shining" and doomed to be not as good, but still enjoyed it - little danny as a grown-up depressed drunk, sometimes the mirror can be pressed too close to the face? it was a spring book for me - fresh flowers and buds on the trees - i read it while pacing the well worn trail around lake lacamas and through the environs of the crusty upper-class folks who've home-steaded above it in their million-dollar lots - kewlest moment: i've always figured one day i'm going to trip and eat shit while walking and reading, like i can't keep one eye on the groudn well enough to avoid awkward fate, yet one day i made 5$ when i noticed, whilst ambuling along, a bill half protruding from a gutter - and no voice to wheeze: "we alllllll float down here"
If by sea : the forging of the American Navy-- from the American Revolution to the War of 1812 - a fitting book for fall, forlorn in most parts - a fine refresher on the history of the american revolution in general w/ a focus on the sea of course - main thesis that the congress didn't know what the fuck to do w/ a navy or why even it should have one and it showed badly - funds would best have been spent on riverine gun-boats instead of the blue-water boats that almost all ended up in british hands by war's end - the most effective ocean warriors of the american navy at the time were privateers actually, who were therefore extra-eager to get the us into a fight w/ somedbody during the napoleonic era just to make the nut - jefferson got all the praise for the first use of a reconstituted navy after the revolution, though ironically he had opposed the construction of frigates throughout washington and adams time in office, and didn't build anything during his 8 years either
the ascent of money - didn't think economics could make for interesting reading but go figure - underscores why those boys are the first put against the wall when the revolution comes - a long, long history of boom n' bust, scandal and slippery bullshit - a house of cards our little world is built upon
on the wealth of nations - the last book gave me a hankering to take on adam smith hisself, but luckily i was saved by the pj o'rourke book, which contained the wonderful line: "i read "the wealth of nations" so you don't have to" - funny man
under the banner of heaven - yeah, i wasn't in danger of joining hte mormons already, but this'un sure made the case more closed
also 2 textbooks, one on astronomy, t'other on environmental geology
